Sacum Tenent - Bespoke Bags

Founded - London 1979

Biography

I served my apprenticeship in cutting, design and tailoring at Angels Theatrical Costumiers in London. I made my first bag in 1979 from the offcuts of material from which I had cut a waistcoat for Anthony Hopkins. Actors and actresses attending Morris Angels for fittings saw and ordered my unique travel pieces.

Two years of world travel as nanny to the children of a famous American writer finally brought me to New York and enabled me to indulge my love of fabrics in the 7th Avenue garment district.

Hiring a heavy duty sewing machine was the next step and finding an amiable cab driver prepared to load the machine into the back of his yellow cab and help carry it up to the 2nd floor apartment in Greenwich Village. Within six months every tenant in the building had bought a weekend bag for Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons.

My return to London coincided with the opening of the craft market in Covent Garden where, over the following eight years, I earned the loyalty of an international clientele.

During this Covent Garden period I retained a large display case at the Savoy Hotel and sold to Fortnum and Mason and Harvey Nichols. A natural progression dictated opening my own shops in London and Glasgow, the latter opened by Prince Charles.

Finally in 1988 the development and introduction of in-house tapestries drawn from museums established the exclusivity of the collection.The following year I determined to sell to Bergdoff Goodman, New York. Meeting the store's vice chairman in the elevator, I took an order for the entire range between the 1st and 7th floors.

Over the past 20 years, collections have retailed in prestigious stores in Europe and the U.S.while my growing list of private clients numbers many of the actors and actresses who first discovered me at Morris Angels.

Growth in private custom has freed me to close my shops and concentrate my talent and energy on the design side in my studio in a tranquil village of rural Herefordshire.